Matthews Funeral Home

06/14/2025

Funeral service for Sheron Schmidt.

05/14/2025

On May 13, our funeral home participated in the P.A.R.T.Y Program, which is designed to expose youth to the tragedies involved in making bad decisions. The youth involved today were exposed to a mock accident scene and witnessed the “injured” being rushed away by ambulance and a “fatality” being taken away in a hearse. They then went to the ER to discover what happens there. Following that, they came to the funeral home to attend a mock funeral for one of their classmates. During that “funeral”, I addressed the students with remarks related to my experiences over the years. It was suggested to me that perhaps my message should be made available to a wider audience, so I have posted it below - please feel free to share it with anyone you feel needs to read it.
TRIGGER WARNING - those reading this who have experienced tragic death may wish to stop reading here. It is not my wish or intention to stir up painful memories. So, here it is, for what it’s worth...

My name is Mark. I have been a funeral director for 45 years, and I have lost track of the number of young people I have buried because of bad decisions they have made. And to be honest, I want to be done burying young people, and I certainly don't want to have to bury any of you here today.

There are two things that I know people think when taking risks:
-that stuff happens to the other guy: but think about this...to someone else who’s saying the same thing...YOU are the other guy!
- “well, if I end up killing myself, that’s my problem”. Guess what - it’s not your problem - you are dead; you have no problems. But your death now becomes your parents’ problem, your grandparents’ problem, your siblings’ problem, your friends’ problem, the community’s problem.

I wish I would be allowed to have each one of you walk beside me during the days following the death of a young person to be there to see the devastation at the scene and how it affects first responders, to be there with me as I es**rt mom and dad into the room to identify their teenager on a stretcher, to be in the room with me as I attempt to cut through the deep emotions of the family in order to coordinate funeral arrangements, to be there as I explain to mom and dad that an open casket is not an option, to be with me to see the effect on others in the community as they gather for the funeral and to be with me as I lower the young person six feet into the ground, never to be seen again.

But that’s not possible, and with any luck, not even an option because right now you are making a conscious decision to live a long, happy and productive life and to experience for yourself the joys of one day holding your newborn son or daughter, of watching your own children become who you are today, of holding your newborn grandchild, and of growing old with the one you love.

Throughout your lives, right from the moment you are born through to being very old, you will receive certificates for being born, for doing good work, for getting good marks, for winning races, for graduating from high school and post-secondary, for your accomplishments in university or at work, for community service, for being there for others. In your lifetime, you may accumulate just a few certificates or enough to cover the walls of a large room. Either way, these are mementos of things you have done in your life, things of which you can be proud, and you can see them everyday and display them for others to see.

Whether you earn one or a hundred certificates in your lifetime, there is one that will be your last certificate...a certificate that you will never see, a certificate that says you were here, but now, you are not. Your birth certificate tells the world that it can celebrate a new person arriving on earth. Your death certificate tells the world that you have ceased to exist and that it can move on without you. This certificate tells the world how and when you died - and it can be up to you what the world sees on this certificate - “he died of complications due to advanced old age” or “she died of massive internal injuries as a result of a motor vehicle collision while driving impaired by alcohol”.

You will never see what gets written on your final certificate, but you do have the ability to determine what gets written on it and who signs it - the doctor caring for you in the nursing home or the coroner attending the scene of your tragic death.

You decide.

04/15/2025

We would like to caution our followers with respect to this on-line obituary site. We are seeing a number of obituaries that are being copied from our website and placed on theirs. Not only do they take the information without permission, but they add their own content and make changes to the original, often rendering the information inaccurate. We have ‘gone a few rounds’ with them over trying to get inaccurate obituaries removed, to the point that they now refuse to listen to our concerns. In our opinion, they are simply using our families’ obituaries to solicit the sale of products that they offer on their site. If you end up on this web page when searching for an obituary, we suggest you seek it out directly from the source, our website (or that of any other funeral home involved), to get the most accurate information.

10/14/2024

08/21/2024

A friend shared this - we feel it's worth sharing too.

04/10/2024

Every year at this time, we struggle with cemetery conditions, no matter where we go. The partial thaw causes water to remain on the surface, causing havoc. We have had several burials recently in the same vicinity, in the Melville City Cemetery, and the extra traffic has caused a bad situation to get worse. However, we can always count on our staff member Neal and the dedicated city crew to go above and beyond to do their best for the families involved. Their cooperative efforts are very much appreciated, and we post this because their work might otherwise go unnoticed.

03/28/2024

We recently had a funeral for a woman whose 13 year-old granddaughter is a prolific crocheter of ‘stuffies’, which she makes without patterns. While her grandmother was sick in hospital, she gave grandma a selection of her creations, and discovered that grandma took great comfort from rubbing the flippers of these frog stuffies. After her grandma passed away, grandpa wondered if she might like to provide an on-going supply to the local hospital, to give to any patients who are in need of a calming influence. She jumped at the suggestion and the hospital gratefully accepted. So, she and grandpa decided to partner up, with grandpa funding the project. Following her grandma’s funeral, they decided that they would also like to supply our funeral home with some, to be given to anyone, especially children, who may be feeling some anxiety while at a funeral service. Lena Kohlenberg, we can’t thank you enough for your kindness and we feel that you deserve to be acknowledged for your generosity, compassion and empathy. Good on both of you! (NB - we were given permission to name Lena in this post)

03/27/2024

For the last couple of days, there has been a pile-driving operation at the construction site across the street from the funeral home. Because the banging has been reverberating through our building, and because we were having a service in our chapel today, we asked the company involved if there was any way that they could help us out. Without any hesitation, they offered to shut down operation prior to, and for the duration of, the funeral service. I don't know the name of the company, but we want to publicly acknowledge them for their consideration and cooperation. Their kindness was very much noticed and appreciated by the family involved.

03/22/2024

A couple of months ago, I was visiting with a gentleman who has observed the fact that a lot of businesses that used to be locally-owned are now owned by larger, non-local groups or corporations. He was aware that in the funeral profession, two large corporations (based out of Toronto, ON and Houston, TX) now own a large portion of what used to be family-run businesses, so he was wondering if local ownership is still relevant in our industry. My response was that local ownership is, and always will be, relevant in all forms of business, including ours. To illustrate my position, I made these points:

-local owners pay local residential taxes, supporting local governance and schools
-local owners support other local owners by making a point of shopping within the community as much as possible and engaging the services of local trades people and professionals
-local owners don’t just focus on “making the sale”, but are concerned about on-going consumer satisfaction; after all, those consumers are their friends and neighbours
-local owners take consumer feedback seriously and will always look for new ways to improve their service
-local owners are able to create long-term relationships with their clientele, relationships that are mutually beneficial to the owners and the consumers of their goods and services
-local owners support local endeavours and events, be they cultural, sporting, charitable or otherwise
-local owners, and their families, are members of the community, so they concern themselves with what is happening within the community so, as a result, local owners can be found volunteering throughout the community

I concluded by saying that, as the only local owners of our business type in the community, I know first hand that local ownership is not only still relevant, but it is as important as it ever was. He thanked me for my perspective and suggested that others needed to hear it. I debated for a while about making a post reflecting on our conversation, since similar sentiments have been expressed by others before, but then decided to take his suggestion as relevant feedback. So, here it is, for what it’s worth.

01/18/2024

Today we were pleased to represent our profession at the first Melville Comprehensive School career and job fair, to provide career and education information to high school students from the area considering a future in funeral service. If anyone would like some of the printed information that we had available, please contact our office, and we'd be happy to send it out.